


they never really go away

by MaryPSue



Category: Crimson Peak (2015), The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Haunting, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, Loss of Identity, Past Character Death, if anything counts as a happy ending in horror then this probably does, just a lotta weird meta identity stuff what did you expect from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Some houses are born bad; some houses achieve badness; and some houses have badness thrust upon them.Some houses die bad.Crimson Peak sinks. Hill House burns.





	they never really go away

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, folks.
> 
> (My sincerest apologies to Shirley Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Ray Bradbury, Angela Carter, Buddy Baker & Xavier Atencio, and anyone else I might have inadvertently or deliberately <s>stolen from</s> paid homage to here.)

1.

Some houses are born bad. Some wicked intent forms each stone of the foundation and each shingle of the roof, some malice imbues every cornice and warps every floorboard, tuning a fine creaking instrument from innocent wood. Some houses are silos for darkness, gathered in some unspeakable harvest and stored away against the lean bright summer months, a refuge and shelter for things that blossom like mushrooms away from the light. Some houses are infested with wickedness the way other houses, kinder houses, more normal houses, are infested with ants or termites; and the wickedness proves far more difficult to exterminate.

Some houses are born bad; some houses achieve badness; and some houses have badness thrust upon them.

Some houses die bad.

Crimson Peak sinks. Hill House burns.

It doesn't matter how, or when. Perhaps Allerdale Hall, called Crimson Peak, suffers a slow suffocation, through long years sucked gradually into the bleeding clay ground, its reluctant inheritor never returning to see its beautifully-carven staircase rising from red nothing towards a rotten roof, to walk triumphant atop its shingles as it commits itself and its dead to living burial. Perhaps it happens all at once, the soft soil parting beneath it and flowing back in following the collapse to smother over turrets and widow's walk and chimneys all, leaving nothing but a small pucker in the peak of the hill to show it and all its secrets had ever stood at all. Perhaps the townsfolk of Hillsdale finally grow tired of Hill House's watchful eyes above them, its evil presence overshadowing their town. Perhaps a careless renter, in their haste to get away, leaves a fire in one of the grates, a fire that even the diligent Mrs. Dudley does not arrive in time to smother.

It doesn't matter how. Crimson Peak sinks, Hill House burns, and for whatever walked there, the story should by rights be over.

But some houses are born bad. Some houses are no sooner built than shadows, flying in from elsewhere, take root in their walls.

2.

_You called me here._

3.

It was a charming patch of land, bordered on all sides by a wall of tall, cool oleanders, shaking their pink and white blossoms over the road and the little stream. It had been developed, or slated for development, but some tragedy or bureaucracy had claimed all but the very foundations of a little house which, Jill was certain, would have been equally charming. The land had stood empty and overgrown for years before she and Henry had driven by and fallen immediately in love. A few hours in the village office and the office of a realtor later, and it was theirs.

The builders had had problems from the start. The old foundation was too weathered, too overgrown - it had to be pulled up and recast, or risk the house being unstable. Once built on its strong new foundation, though, the house was quite unstable nonetheless. Angles sloped, just slightly, just enough to unnerve. Doors sagged unexpectedly open, and stood waving back and forth in not the slightest breath of draft. The stairs sang out in the middle of the night just exactly as though someone were climbing, up and up, on and on, into infinity. What should have been a bright and airy cottage developed, somehow, an indefinable closeness, a sort of darkness clinging to the corners like cobwebs, in defiance of every window and lamp. There was a lingering smell of earth.

Jill disliked it from the moment she first laid eyes on it, and Henry did too. But, having put so much of themselves into it, and having so little of themselves to put in the first place, they each independently resolve not to speak of it. They had had such dreams, when first they’d seen the patch of land, for the home they would build and the life they would live together there. Now, even with so many of their hopes dashed, they cannot let go of the only solid piece of those dreams that remains. 

So they endure the miserable miasma of the house, hoping with a fervour that borders on religious that it will get better if they just change the draperies, air out the rooms, add more lights. If they only keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. 

If they can only stay one more night.

4.

She is all hard and armoured, like a glittering beetle, and she dislikes to be seen, yet still there is something about her - it - them. Something reminiscent of a time before, something dear and fleeting and lost, lost, lost. Something bright, and yellow, like a stray sunbeam. A little cat. A cousin, perhaps.

Something all sharp under its manipulative sweetness. Something dearly, dreadfully hated.

_(She is wicked, Eleanor, wicked as bright red toenails on dirty feet. Wicked, Daughter, as Foxe's illustrated Hell. Wicked as a name written in blood._

_And she knows your thoughts without your voicing them, does she not, you foolish girl? Her little gift of perception. She knows which buttons to press.)_

5.

Eleanor Vance had been her mother's caretaker, towards the end of the old woman's life. 

It had been a thankless, grueling reality, and one from which Eleanor had never dreamed of escaping until, quite suddenly, she was out. Cut loose in a world in which she could not fully participate, not anymore; a world constructed at slightly wrong angles from the only world she knew. Little wonder, then, that the twisting halls of Hill House, so disorienting, repulsive, and frightening at first, quickly welcomed her as one of their own.

What fled from the smoking ruins of Hill House was not exactly Eleanor Vance, or even a shade of her. But it was followed, as it sped invisibly on an icy wind through the dingy, miserable streets of Hillsdale and down, out from the shadows of those encroaching hills into the world beyond, by a tremendous rattling and tapping, as though someone were banging on the walls of all of Hillsdale's houses and all the trees lining the narrow, winding Route 5, with a heavy, old-fashioned cane.

Lady Lucille Sharpe stove her mother's head in with a cleaver.

She would have liked to have been a caretaker, a nurturer, someone who encouraged lovely and cherished things to grow, and to that end she was quite willing to dirty her fine white hands. To be the gardener, the keeper, the shepherd or perhaps the sheepdog; the one who fought off the wolf, the one who killed live food for the young and toothless, the one who ground blood and bone meal for the roses. She never could have what she truly wanted, but she had her brother, his love. She had her house.

And that which she tended grew strangely, in the dark.

What sank with the ruins of Allerdale Hall was not Lucille Sharpe, nor had it been for a long, long time. It lay there, buried with the house it wore like a scarab's shimmering carapace, until the very beams and bones of Allerdale Hall decayed around it into something unrecognisable.

And then it stirred, as though waking from a long, sad dream.

6.

A quiet resentment brews between Jill and Henry.

Each blames the other. For forcing their hand, for pushing them into a commitment to a house that should itself have been committed. What should have been a dream - their charming patch of land, their little cottage all their own - has turned nightmare; and now, rather than wake themselves, they prefer to turn upon one another. If _she_ had not so desired the little dormer windows on the roof, the ones that glower down from the roof like calculating eyes, the ones that let in nearly no light. If _he_ had not insisted on building so close to the line of trees, the better to protect from the wilder winter winds. If _she_ had not exclaimed in delight as they first drove past.

Neither wants the house any longer, and yet, some perverse pride or whimsy will let neither relinquish it.

It’s Henry who notices the smell of smoke. Who sees, from the drive, the thin, pale wisp rising from the chimney of the wood fireplace when he knows no one else to be home.

But it’s Jill who hears the crying in the small hours of the night.

7.

It should have been new, and free, and fine, away down the hills, all strange and charming and peaceful. It feels as though the search for peace has been endless. Is endless.

As the flames had devoured binding veranda and great front doors and sugar eggs and cherub faces and delicate-patterned wallpaper, as heavy draperies and musty books and overstuffed chairs and tilted floors had fallen to ash and the very stones of the tower had warmed, as silverware had melted in its drawers and china cracked on its shelves, she had fluttered, broken-winged, to a refuge half-remembered. A magic square of poison trees, an enchantment that another her had promised once to return and break.

And, in slow stages, break it did.

Once...once, when such things could be dreamed, needed to be dreamed, imagination had populated this place with a palace invisible, with a warm and welcoming royal mother, with a knight-errant or prince upon a white charger riding down, bejeweled and smiling, from the hills. These visions do not quite come to pass, and yet.

The palace is a cottage, and rises slow, progress hampered by workmen’s irrational superstitious fears. The man and the woman who come to live there are quite young, no child with them, though one of the rooms is bordered with soft pastel animals. The woman sits there, in the rocking chair, most days, and looks out the little dormer window over the lawn and the road and the stream away at the back of the property, rocking and rocking. She is no queen, and no mother, but something in her presence is welcoming all the same.

And what comes down from the hills is no prince.

At first, in the failing light, it appears all white. White, with trailing pennants and ribbons of velvet red. Like an oleander. Like something from a storybook, like a fairy tale. _(Always Prince Valiant for you, Eleanor - but then, would you ever do with anything less? Always the charming men with haunted birthrights, all empty behind the blue eyes. Always the ones lacking a mother. Always the ones who see you for how foolish you are, how easy to take in.)_

But as the sun sinks, as that which comes from the hills draws nearer, it can be seen to be red. Red as clay, red as blood. It draws a train behind it, long and glittering, of satin sewn with fine glass beads. Or perhaps it leaves behind it a glistening trail of something wet and red and sticky, like an enormous crimson slug, a great vile clot of blood.

By the time it steps, or perhaps flows, into the shade of the oleanders, out of the sun, it appears quite black. It lies like a spill of ink, or perhaps oil, across the fine soft grass and little wild flowers, faint Stygian blues and greens gleaming in its depths, with its long train still glistening redly behind it; and it stares, eyeless as a skull, up at the house.

_(Journeys end in lovers meeting, Eleanor; journeys end in lovers meeting.)_

And, from the watchful eyes of the dormer windows, that which gazes eyelessly back recognises kin.

8.

Henry is already sitting up in bed when Jill stirs awake.

“I was dreaming,” he says, and then stops, staring at the narrow silver bar of moonlight cast against the wall. “My mother. It’s been years -”

He falls silent, again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, at last. “I don’t blame you. I mean - I don’t _mean_ to blame you. I know it’s not your fault, I only...” He stops, and gestures helplessly, as though he has run out of words. As though there are no more words left to say what must be said. 

Jill wriggles her way up in the bed and leans her head against his shoulder. Henry puts his arm around her, and Jill pulls the blankets up around them. The weather must be turning, she thinks, pressing up against his side, seeking warmth as much as comfort. There’s a chill in the air, like the wind off a high glacier, biting at her bare face.

She isn’t sure, at first, if Henry has heard it as well. But then he goes stiff beside her, his staring eyes fixing on the door. 

Beyond it, from down the hall, from the direction of the nursery, quite clearly, comes a pitiful, reedy cry, high and thin, like an infant far too young.

9.

_You and I, Eleanor. We are caretakers. We have always put the needs of others above our own desires. And has that not brought us our desires, in the end? Your small, earned measure of happiness?_

_Do you dare to seize that happiness, Eleanor? Do you even know it when it stands before you? Have you always been so ashamed even to know, to name, what it is you desire?_

_We, who have dwelt so long in darkness, have no use for such human things as shame._

_You called me here, Eleanor. You._

10.

The house, never friendly, grows colder and colder around them. Jill takes to wearing large sweaters and thick socks. Henry turns the heat up and up. His lips thin into a firm line when Jill suggests a fire in the fireplace. She does not suggest it again.

Something thumps against the walls, always in the night, always waking them both from sound sleep. Henry says, firmly, that it must be the oleander branches, muses that perhaps they should not have built so close to the windbreak, after all. 

There is a sound, like a woman softly sobbing, or perhaps singing, or perhaps screaming, that seems to leak down the stairs when both Jill and Henry are below. A fox, Jill was certain, at first. But she could not explain why it seemed to come from inside the house.

(The few times they’ve gone looking for it, it’s come from behind different closed doors. Jill’s never gathered the courage to open one. The time Henry did, there was nothing behind it but the pastel wallpaper they’d picked out for the nursery, and the rocking chair by the window slowly rocking to a halt.)

And then there are the things that only one of them see. Henry comes flying up out of the basement one evening, swearing that blood is coming up through the floor in the shape of human footprints, but when Jill goes down the concrete floor is clean and bare and dry. Jill runs herself a bath on another evening and screams when blood, not water, flows from the tap, but when Henry comes running the water is clear, if a little yellowed from the iron in the ground.

Henry slips into bed with icy feet one night, long after Jill had thought he’d been in bed already, swearing about a dog, it must have been a dog, he’d had to chase out of the yard. Jill wakes from a doze in the rocker in the nursery and sees, out the dormer window, away down by the stream, a small family in old-fashioned clothes, with a red picnic blanket spread out underneath them and a puppy or small dog racing excitedly around them, a bright red ball in its mouth. She thinks nothing of it, until she blinks, and they’re no longer there.

Moths keep getting into the house, somehow. They’re multiplying; there are three new ones for every one Henry kills, for every one Jill traps and throws outside. Their powdery wings rustle in the darkness of the bedroom almost exactly like someone in a heavy, old-fashioned dress circling around and around the room.

The cries come every night. 

11.

Eleanor Vance had been her mother's caretaker, towards the end of the old woman's life. 

_You killed her, Eleanor. You know you did. As surely as though you had laid your hands upon a knife. You heard her stick tapping, thumping, against the wall. You heard her cries for help. And you. Eleanor. The good daughter, the dutiful daughter, the pious daughter. _

_You turned right over, and you went back to sleep._

Lady Lucille Sharpe stove her mother's head in with a cleaver. 

_Ah. Never the good daughter. Dutiful, perhaps. But never pious. _

_Do you know, Eleanor, what drives a woman to kill her own mother? _

_Oh. Yes. Of course you do._

12.

The moon is pouring silver through the window when Jill wakes, her fingers numb, her bones solid with ice. With nerveless hands, she pushes the covers aside.

The floorboards are like ice beneath her feet, and with each step, she can feel them sink slightly. Can hear the faintest sound, like something sucking at the boards from beneath. Like something oozing up between them.

She hesitates in front of the door, aware somewhere in the frozen cage of her brain that she is afraid to open it, afraid to reach out and turn the antique crystal knob she remembers picking out with such joy, such hope. It doesn’t feel like the kind of fear she always thought she’d feel. It just feels as though her mind is there, whole and intact, perfectly rational and calm, while terror goes on all around her.

Jill reaches out and turns the knob, opens the door, steps out into the hall towards the sound of an infant’s laboured cries.

The hall is all black, except where the moonlight lays a silver path down the middle, leading to the gaping black hole of a door that leads into the nursery where no living child has ever slept. Jill watches her own bare feet as she walks, all strange and white and almost glowing, hardly feeling her own legs move. Her arms are wrapped around her, her fingers digging into the flesh of her arms, but she barely feels that either. She becomes dimly aware, as she proceeds down the hall towards the void-black square of the nursery door, that she is shivering. She becomes dimly aware, as she proceeds down the hall towards the void-black square of the nursery door, that the single window that looks onto the hall should not admit enough moonlight to illuminate the entire path from her door to the nursery. 

The dark door rises up before her, and swallows her whole.

13.

She is all hard and armoured, like a glittering beetle, and she dislikes to be seen.

In the sweeping train of her old-fashioned dress, though; in the thickly-oozing red stain that leaches slowly up through the floor where she stands; in the hollow gaze of her empty sockets, like high, darkened windows; she carries with her the sorrows and memories and longings of multitudes. Every one who ever died at her hand bleeds out around her; sometimes she is enrobed in crimson, sometimes powdered in white. She carries with her every lost one she has ever loved - or hated - or both. She herself is a haunted house.

She dislikes to be seen. Because it is impossible, on seeing her, not to know at once what deepest desires drip from her raw and bloody heart.

It is impossible, on seeing her, not to notice the helpless, twisted red bundle she cradles so gently in her arms.

_(Those hands that pressed poison on helpless, trapped girls, those arms that bore lifeless bodies down into bleeding clay earth. Why not leave? Why not escape, once freedom was won? Why remain in a trap, why prolong the horror?)_

_Why go on to Hill House at all? Why not simply stop, and live some enchanted life in a little cottage with a blue door and a white cat on the step? _

Lady Lucille Sharpe had been her mother's caretaker, towards the end of the old woman's life. Eleanor Vance stove her mother's head in with a cleaver. 

They neither of them are here, in the little cottage with its hinges creaking in doorless chambers and its singing stairs and its bad angles to confound the eye and inner ear. And both of them are here, and their mothers besides, and the man they'd thought they'd loved and burned to see with another woman_ (do you know how the scent of burning follows you, Eleanor, do you see how you shed ash)_, and the woman they'd never admitted to themselves that they'd wanted and the daughter, the daughter, the poor lost traitorous wicked daughter they'd loved...

_The horror...the horror was for love. Because freedom without love is no freedom at all. _

14.

Henry wakes to Jill’s softly cuddling up beside him, curling close against him in a way she hadn’t done in a long time, since before the house was finished, since before she began clinging to him again in fear. He turns, to see her smiling, a smile, as well, that he had almost forgotten she could wear.

“Jill?” he asks, and that smile grows wider.

“Henry,” she says, with a little sigh, and puts her arms around him, her head on his bare chest. “I’m ready.”

“You - but -” The moonlight spills over her hair, turning it to a shining halo, softening the sharp angles of her face and blurring the fine worry lines that had started to gather around her mouth and her eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Sure,” Jill repeats, her voice almost dreamlike. “I want to try again.”

15.

_There are things that tie them to a place...an emotion, a drive. Loss, revenge...or love._

Some houses are born bad. Some houses are no sooner built than shadows, flying in from elsewhere, take root in their walls.

The nameless house in its cage of oleanders was not perhaps born bad, but had badness thrust upon it. A box stuffed to bursting with pasts and sorrows not its own, with a restless longing that none who dwelt there had ever been able to fulfill. 

But whatever walks there, no longer walks alone. 


End file.
